1. Technical Field
The technology disclosed herein relates to a lens barrel that is configured to support an optical system.
2. Background Information
Recent years have witnessed the growing popularity of digital cameras that make use of a charge coupled device (CCD), complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) sensor, or other such imaging element to convert an optical image into an electrical signal, and digitize the electrical signal.
With such a digital camera, not only is a higher pixel count needed for the CCD or CMOS sensor, but higher performance is needed for the lens barrel that forms an optical image on the imaging element.
Meanwhile, there is a need to reduce the overall size of the product in the field of digital cameras. Accordingly, there is a need to reduce the size of the lens barrel, which is considered to contribute greatly to reducing the overall size of the product.
To raise the performance and reduced the size of a lens barrel, it is necessary to reduce the size of the drive system that drives the lens group, and to reduce the size of the optical system. Also, to reduce the size of the optical system, high precision is needed in the orientation of the lens group that forms the optical image.
In view of this, many different kinds of lens barrel have been proposed in the past (e.g., see Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application 2004-271789 and Japanese Patent 4,211,363).